London turmoil

Scargill imposes Stalinite slate - regional leadership resigns

Arthur Scargill's organisation in London is now in turmoil. Brian Heron's Fourth International Supporters Caucus has all but given up hope. Demoralisation is rife. Last month comrade Heron formally resigned as London president and was faithfully followed by secretary Bernard Gibbons.

John Mulrenan and Heather Downs agreed to stand in for them till the AGM in May. But, given the way things are going, London SLP will soon be in the hands of dyed-in-the-wool Stalinites.

The list of candidates for the London region in the European elections is a good indication of how things stand. Headed by general secretary Scargill himself, it includes NEC member Harpal Brar and four of his closest ultra-Stalinite supporters. With the London organisation shattered and membership continuing to desert, Scargill has had to fall back on the shadowy Association of Communist Workers.

Comrade Brar is the editor of Lalkar, the bi-monthly journal of the Indian Workers Association (GB) and is sixth on the SLP's London list. In a controversial opening at the CPGB's Communist University in August 1998 he described JV Stalin as "a great Leninist" who "had a genius for putting into effect the precepts of Marxism-Leninism" (November 12 1998). Brar is open in his view that Soviet-style bureaucratic socialism under Stalin - complete with mass purges and the hunting down of "despicable counterrevolutionary Trotskyites" - is just what the working class needs.

Just below him, at number seven on the list, is Ella Rule, the newly elected chair of SLP women's section. Comrade Rule is the leading functionary in one of the two rival friendship societies with North Korea. Harpal's daughter, Joti Brar, who was also given a leading role at the February 27 annual general meeting of the women's section, is second on the list, while Amanda Rose, the Brarite secretary of the section, is number four.

An unexpected name is that of Hardev Dhillon, who is third. A staunch ally of Brar, comrade Dhillon is a prominent IWA member in south London. Having previously declined invitations to join the SLP, he finally became a member last summer, at a time when a fresh batch of IWA supporters were coming in to boost comrade Brar's chances of success in the November NEC elections. Comrade Dhillon joined along with members of his immediate family, but, needless to say, they have yet to make an appearance at any SLP event.

The list, which also includes NEC members John Hendy and Joe Marino, as well as comrades Robert Siggins and John Hayball, was imposed on the London regional committee by the national executive. Comrade Heron had won his committee to a policy of bureaucratic blackmail following the election of Royston Bull, the editor of the homophobic Economic and Philosophic Science Review, to the SLP vice-presidency at the November 1998 special congress. Heron and co announced that they would not contest the Euro poll unless Scargill overturned the democratic election of his vice-president. The Fisc-dominated LRC naively believed that without their help the SLP would be unable to contest.

Instead the general secretary launched a disciplinary offensive against comrade Heron and the other leading members of the Appeal faction - fellow Fiscite Carolyn Sikorski and former Scargill loyalists Terry Dunn and Helen Drummond - not for threatening to go on strike over the Euro elections, but for having dared to circulate their 'Appeal for a special conference'. He also hauled comrade Bull himself before a complaints committee for the equally heinous crime of "comment on the affairs of the SLP" in the pages of the EPSR. Although the committee recommended Bull's expulsion, no action has been taken, following the challenge by comrade Imran Khan, acting as the Appeal Four's lawyer, concerning the validity of the complaints procedure.

Despite the SLP's internal shambles Scargill's entirely predictable decision to forge ahead with a party slate and ignore each and every attempt to mount a united socialist challenge in June has caused disarray on the left and thrown the Socialist Workers Party into crisis. The SWP still clings to the hope that Scargill will 'see sense' and avoid splitting the left vote. The Socialist Alliance in London correctly called on our party to join it in a common list, but Scargill's point blank refusal has caused deep divisions in the SWP leadership, which is now considering abandoning its short-lived 'electoral turn'.

Yet it is not just other left organisations that Scargill views with contempt. He dismisses with equal disdain all groups, factions, and individuals within his own party who refuse to bow before his every word. So the SLP slates for the June elections announced in the latest Socialist News (March) are stuffed full of yes-men and yes-women.

In the five regions where the lists of SLP candidates have been declared, there are just two names who have not had a history of complete subservience to Scargill. In the West Midlands top of the list is Mick Atherton, who was one of the original 53 signatories of the 'Appeal for a special conference'. Comrade Atherton, a militant activist in the RMT who is challenging the union leadership, has now had second thoughts about backing Fisc and their allies. His number two is Sohan Singh, an EPSR supporter on the NEC.

Socialist News declares that the list of candidates in the troubled North West region is "being finalised". But Scargill has a big problem in the area. Comrade Chris Jones, the Merseyside secretary, has written an open letter in protest at Scargill's plans to subsume both Merseyside and Fisc-dominated Manchester into a new (unconstitutional) North West region, where Paul Hardman and the 3,000 block votes of the North West, Cheshire and Cumbria Miners Association would constitute a block vote dictatorship (March 18 1999).

Merseyside has proposed a list of candidates for the European poll, including maverick Alec McFadden, another 'Appeal' signatory. But Scargill has called a conference in his Leigh stronghold for April 6, not only in order to set up his new regional centre, but to ensure a list more to his liking is agreed.

Socialist News also announced the candidates for Yorkshire and Humberside, the South West, and Scotland. However, Scargill is now triumphantly declaring that the SLP will contest the European elections in every British region. At a well attended public meeting in Crosby on March 25, in response to a unity call from a comrade from Merseyside Socialists, he hypocritically accused other left groups of attempting to split the SLP vote. Socialist Labour was a party, he said, whereas an electoral alliance would fall apart after polling day. He may well be right in formal terms, but the central question must surely be the type of party the working class needs - and the kind of alliances required to build it.

An SWP comrade raised several points, but significantly did not mention the Socialist Alliance. Scargill taunted her with the SWP's indecision over whether or not to stand.

Socialist News

The March issue of Socialist News serves up the usual eclectic mish-mash, which the editorial team has attempted to focus on the forthcoming elections. The paper is now a Fisc-free zone, and articles from EPSR supporters are also no longer accepted. However, Bullite Steve Johns does manage to sneak in a contribution on the race relations industry, possibly because its muted use of language - remarkable by EPSR standards - does not appear too much at odds with the politically correct house style.

You would never have guessed from comrade Amanda Rose's report on the women's AGM that the section had witnessed a fierce factional battle for control. Scargill had gerrymandered the voting entitlements to ensure Fisc was voted out. The Fiscites angrily picketed the meeting and refused to take part, thus leaving comrades Rose and Rule a clear run. But the section is to continue with Fisc plans for a women's tribunal - "Let's get on with it," exhorts the new section secretary.

Comrade Louise McDaid, writing on the SLP's European campaign in Scotland, parrots the 'vote us in to get us out' Scargillite line. But like the general secretary, determined to oppose the "Common Market" come what may, she is curiously ambivalent about the national question in Scotland itself. A Scottish parliament, she writes, "whether devolved or independent", would have its "sovereign powers ... removed under EC/EU membership". According to comrade McDaid, the SLP "demands a parliament that abolishes capitalism and replaces it with a socialist system".

You could hardly wish for a clearer expression of top-down, reformist national socialism - and one that is so completely abstracted from the real issues of working class democracy. Indeed, for comrade Scargill the question as to whether his utopian scheme is to be implemented by Westminister or Holyrood is clearly a secondary one.

However, the paper will be read by only a tiny percentage of the plummeting membership. As branches fold and party units cease to function, the circulation of Socialist News continues its sharp decline. In some parts of the country - I am told in London too - it is virtually unobtainable, as none have been delivered to bookshops.

To make matters worse, it seems that Scargill has decided to cut off supplies of the SLP Information Bulletin to dissident branch secretaries. The fact that this also deprives their members of even the limited information he is prepared to disclose is of no concern to the Great Leader.